Sunday, 27 January 2008

Paul just blogged about it: The Echo Nest are demonstrating some of the stuff they have been working on. The one I like best is "automatic song" (which they say is a composition from automatically combining about 50 songs).

I'm curious what impact their API to extract features from audio will have on MIR research. Seems like they are also targeting artists who use processing to visualize music content. I'd like to see videos of their music visualizations.

Wednesday, 23 January 2008

The European Commission (Unit DG INFSO/E2) is planning to invest 2B€ in research and development (2009-2010, FP7). They recently sent out emails asking for comments from researchers:

“[…] we would very much like to hear your views on what you think are the most pressing problems and ripe opportunities in your field. We are interested as much in scientific advances as in innovative applications or infrastructural initiatives in domains where they are likely to have a large positive impact.”

(The context is “knowledge technologies, interactive media and online content”.)

It’s an interesting question to think about.

I’m tempted to point them to work on unstructured collaborative tagging of music, ie, folksonomies. There are lots of interesting opportunities there, some of which might still be there by the time the FP7 projects start.